Mexican politicos charged in Texas

Jorge Juan Torres Lopez, 59, was the interim governor of Coahuila for most of 2011. He left office when it was discovered the Mexican state was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Prosecutors say that he now is a fugitive. less

Jorge Juan Torres Lopez, 59, was the interim governor of Coahuila for most of 2011. He left office when it was discovered the Mexican state was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Prosecutors say that he ... more

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Former Coahuila treasurer Hector Javier Villarreal

Former Coahuila treasurer Hector Javier Villarreal

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Mexican politicos charged in Texas

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Federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the former governor and former finance minister of the Mexican border state of Coahuila, claiming they laundered millions of dollars in San Antonio and across the state.

Villarreal, who also has been charged in Mexico, has extensive business interests in San Antonio, and Torres owns a house near Houston. Both are fugitives, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors have filed a series of lawsuits trying to forfeit property in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley that they say Villarreal purchased through front men with money embezzled from Coahuila state coffers.

They've also moved against bank accounts in the U.S. and Bermuda, where they say Torres and Villarreal stashed laundered money.

From 2008 to 2011, prosecutors allege, Villarreal forged state documents to obtain fraudulent loans. In 2010 and 2011 alone, according to one lawsuit, two different banks made fraudulent loans to Coahuila for more than 3 billion pesos, or nearly $250 million.

And since April 2009, Villarreal and people close to him wired $35 million into the U.S., according to the lawsuit.

In response, the feds have moved to forfeit bank accounts and properties across the state, including a CVS Pharmacy, a storage unit, a strip center and a home in San Antonio, a condo on South Padre Island and commercial properties in Brownsville and Harlingen. Those properties are appraised at more than $20 million.

J.A. “Tony” Canales, a Corpus Christi lawyer representing both Torres and Villarreal, didn't return a call seeking comment. Dennis Sanchez, a Brownsville attorney who said in a court hearing earlier this year that he was hired by Villarreal's brother-in-law Lorenzo Schuessler, and Maria Teresita Botello, Villarreal's wife, also didn't return phone calls.

Steven McCollough, special agent in charge of the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation division in San Antonio, lauded the indictments.

“When the entrails of alleged corruption from foreign countries leaks into the United States, our IRS special agents are adept in aggressively pursuing these individuals, and their activities, to ensure that their serious criminal activity is dealt with to the fullest extent of U.S. laws,” said McCollough, whose office was part of a multiagency task force investigating Torres and Villarreal.

The two face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the money laundering and wire fraud conspiracies and up to 30 years in prison on the bank fraud charges.

Canales said in a September court filing on a lawsuit seeking nearly $3 million of Torres's money in a Bermuda bank account that the lawsuit contained “rambling and confusing factual assertions.”

He said suspicious activity in the account “may just as easily be interpreted as a rational response to the threat of kidnappings, killings and ... identity theft that was prevalent in Mexico and faced by public officials.”

The investigation started when Torres asked the bank to delete records of a wire transfer and to send account statements to a banker's house instead of to his residence in Mexico.

This isn't the first time Mexican officials have been prosecuted in the U.S.

Last year, Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, the former governor of the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to laundering drug money in the U.S.

In related civil filings, they allege that Cano helped Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcaba, the former governor of the border state of Tamaulipas, launder bribes from Mexican drug cartels through U.S. property purchases. U.S. officials have not publicly charged Yarrington with a crime.

Alonzo Peña, the former deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that aside from the awkwardness of charging Mexican officials here, such investigations are often bilateral and are indicted in the country most likely to get a conviction.

Corrupt politicians and drug cartel money launderers “think that the border can serve as a shield to protect them, that they're in the United States and maybe they're not reachable by the Mexican justice system,” Peña said.

“The activities of these politicians that corrupted and compromised their states are having an impact in both the United States and Mexico,” he said “So regardless of where justice could be sought, whether in Mexico or the United States, we need to do everything possible to ensure that justice can be brought against these criminals.”